How to Take a Break from the Sim Successfully

Original article written by Kim Plausible posted 9 years 0 weeks ago

It happens to all of us. Life gets busy. Time gets short. And no number of champions in our stable can make up for the fact that we don’t have time to luxuriate in the loo without a laptop on our lap. When this happens, we seriously begin to look at the ways we can cut back on the amount of time we spend on things, and unfortunately for the sim and the community of players here, our fake horses will never be quite as important to us as our careers, our families, our friends, or the big sale at Petsmart this weekend.

Okay, maybe that last one is just me.

The longer you play the sim, the more and more likely it is that you will need to take a break from the game at some point. Having just come back from a multi-year (as in real life year) break of my own, I thought I would throw out some tips for how to go about that without returning to the game the way I did, empty-handed and with a tiny bankroll. Let’s begin!

Reduce your numbers. This is pretty obvious, but you only want to keep the horses you can’t let go of. And by that, I mean any of those horses that are just rare to get your hands on. Stallions that actually make money. Mares that produce really well. Yearlings or racehorses that you are genuinely excited about. You want to sell or give away anything that doesn’t fall under that category.

For the remaining horses, you want to do one of two things. First, you could sell them at a premium so that when you return, you have a great deal of money to rebuild your stable. When I say at a premium, I mean, don’t sell them just to sell them. I mean get everything you can for them. Contact the players who have the big money, do up a big sale notice on the forum, hold auctions if you feel like that will get you more money. I know that when you are quitting the sim, you don’t have much time for it and that’s why you are quitting. But taking this step at that point will help tremendously if you ever return to the game.

Or, and this is what I recommend more, give those horses to someone you trust to give them back to you should you ever return to the game. Work out the details first. For instance, in return for taking good care of the horses, they get to keep any winnings or foals that the horse produces while they are in their stable. But then afterward, they send them back to you, so you aren’t starting at the very bottom of the totem pole and looking for those super rare acquisitions.

Finally, don’t be a hero. In my “sim will” I was all, oh, just give my horses away to players that need them! Complete with dramatic self-less hand across my forehead. Yeah, that sounds great and all, but if you sell all your horses on the new player page you just return to the game to find all of them in greener pastures. They didn’t help anybody and they aren’t helping you.

When I returned, I was lucky enough to be contacted by Karl Smythe who sent me all of the horses in his stable that had been bred or previously owned by me, plus some others, which helped so much in making me feel reattached to the game. Laura Ferguson sent me some of my old pensioners - (Deep Focus, you mean-hearted little brat, I still love your face) - and Louise Bayou offered to let me share a broodmare she had bought from my stable when the player running it finally gave up on me returning. People are seriously cool about it and it has helped tremendously in feeling like this is a game I actually have history in.

So I can tell you, that if you return to the sim, you are going to want to have horses back in your stable that you actually recognize and love. Because the studs that are standing, the horses that are winning? You are gonna have no clue. Who the heck is Castle Keep?? Derpyderpnewbface.

So if I had to do it over again, I would tell Abe Froman, who was kind enough to run my stable, don’t enter my horses bro. Just take these horses I really like, profit, and when I return, give them back.

Your goal when you leave the sim should be to set yourself up for success when you return. The things you want when you return are money to help you reestablish yourself and horses that tie you to your past accomplishments. Set that up and your successful return will be much more likely.

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